specimen of his peculiar mode of understanding and
answering arguments.

"The reply to the argument against 'saturation,' supplies its own
answer. The reason why it is of no use to try to 'saturate' is precisely
what the Edinburgh Reviewers have suggested,--'THAT THERE IS NO LIMIT
TO THE NUMBER OF THIEVES.' There are the thieves, and the thieves'
cousins,--with their men-servants, their maid-servants, and their little
ones, to the fortieth generation. It is true, that 'a man cannot become
a king or a member of the aristocracy whenever he chooses;' but if there
is to be no limit to the depredators except their own inclination to
increase and multiply, the situation of those who are to suffer is as
wretched as it needs be. It is impossible to define what ARE 'corporal
pleasures.' A Duchess of Cleveland was 'a corporal pleasure.' The
most disgraceful period in the history of any nation--that of the
Restoration--presents an instance of the length to which it is possible
to go in an attempt to 'saturate' with pleasures of this kind."

To reason with such a writer is like talking to a deaf man who catches
at a stray word, makes answer beside the mark, and is led further and
further into error by every attempt to explain. Yet, that our readers
may fully appreciate the abilities of the new philosophers, we shall
take the trouble to go over some of our ground again.

Mr Mill attempts to prove that there is no point of saturation with the
objects of human desire. He then takes it for granted that men have no
objects of desire but those which can be obtained only at the expense
of the happiness of others. Hence he infers that absolute monarchs
and aristocracies will necessarily oppress and pillage the people to a
frightful extent.

We answered in substance thus. There are two kinds of objects of desire;
those which give mere bodily pleasure, and those which please through
the medium of associations. Objects of the former class, it is true, a
man cannot obtain without depriving somebody else of a share. But then
with these every man is soon satisfied. A king or an aristocracy
cannot spend any very large portion of the national wealth on the mere
pleasures of sense. With the pleasures which belong to us as reasoning
and imaginative beings we are never satiated, it is true; but then, on
the other hand, many of those pleasures can be obtained without injury
to any person, and some of them can be obtained only by doing good to
oth